#ShakespearesPlaylist: A Midsummer Night's Dream
This is part of the #ShakespearesPlaylist series! You can read all of those posts here!
A scene from the 1999 film version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, featuring Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania and Kevin Kline as Nick Bottom.
So I LOVE finding songs to fit the mood of #Shakespeare plays. Basically every time I hear a song I love on the radio, I think about how I could fit it into a production. I can’t help it. My brain just does that, which is funny, because I’ve only directed one production (my own one-act) and questioned myself and my abilities the entire time, so I don’t necessarily see myself directing anything else any time soon, but I just like to dream about the music anyway.
I’ve decided to play with this habit of mine more and make full-fledged Spotify and Youtube playlists for each play by Shakespeare, under the umbrella name and hashtag #ShakespearesPlaylist .
This week we’re looking at A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of the most loved and commonly performed Shakespeare plays! And why not? It has fairies, magic, love, mistaken love, hilariously inept actors, and general shenanigans galore; it’s considered one of the most accessible and kid-friendly of the bard’s works. It’s also Shakespeare’s second shortest play at 16,511 words (the actual shortest is Comedy of Errors, which is 14,701 words), which makes it a great choice for community productions and films. You don’t have to make as many cuts to it as you would to say, Hamlet (30,557! There’s a reason it’s rarely performed in full without cuts.), to fit it into a reasonable period of time for a modern audience.
Quick Wikipedia Summary: Midsummer has three main interwoven plots and one plot which serves as a frame story for all the others. The frame story is that the Duke Theseus of Athens and Hippolyta, the Queen of Amazons, are getting married, and everyone’s coming together for the celebration.
The first plot focuses on the lovers- Hermia is in love with Lysander, but her father Egeus wants her to wed Demetrius (to the extent that he threatens to kill her if she doesn’t do what he wants!). Hermia arranges to run away with Lysander and tells her best friend Helena about it, swearing her to secrecy. Helena pines after her former lover Demetrius, who broke up with her to chase after Hermia, and somehow thinks that telling Demetrius about Hermia and Lysander’s plans will endear him to her.
The second plot looks to the fairy king Oberon and fairy queen Titania, who are currently quarreling, as Titania refuses to give a child in her care to Oberon (the child’s mother was one of her worshippers). Oberon summons fairy Puck (also known as Robin Goodfellow) to fetch a flower with magical properties - when applied to a person’s eyes during sleep, that person, upon waking, falls in love with the first living thing they see. Oberon intends to use this to charm Titania so he can steal the child from her while she’s obsessed with some other being.
The third plot focuses on a group of common Athenians (“Rude Mechanicals”) who are putting together a comically inept production of Pyramus and Thisbe to perform at the Duke’s wedding. While rehearsing in the forest, Puck plays a trick on Bottom, the most arrogant member of the troupe, and gives him the head of a donkey, which frightens all his friends away.
These plots all become quickly interwoven. Oberon applies the love flower to Titania’s eyes while she is sleeping so that he can take away the child while she’s distracted; the first thing she sees upon waking is the donkey-headed Bottom. Shenanigans ensue! In addition, Oberon, after seeing Demetrius spurn the pathetic Helena, orders Puck to apply the love flower to Demetrius’s eyes. Puck mistakenly initially gives the flower to Lysander instead, who spies Helena upon waking and professes his undying love for her, abandoning Hermia in the woods in the process. Puck tries to amend this by also giving the flower to Demetrius, but all this does is result in Demetrius and Lysander fighting over Helena, who is convinced that both of them are making fun of her. Hermia flies into a rage over the whole situation and attacks Helena. Further shenanigans ensue!
In the end, Puck removes the flower from Lysander’s eyes and all the lovers end up happy and married by the end. Bottom also is returned to his prior shape as a human and Titania’s love potion is removed after Oberon steals the child; the fairy queen and the king reunite. They all gather together to celebrate Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding and watch the Rude Mechanicals’ play, poking fierce fun at the hapless actors in the process.
First up on the playlist is The Beatles’ She’s Leaving Home, referencing Hermia running away from her father’s house to be with Lysander. To be fair, he literally threatened to kill her if she didn’t marry Demetrius so…good decision.
Wednesday morning at five o'clock
As the day begins
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hoped would say more
She goes downstairs to the kitchen
Clutching her handkerchief
Quietly turning the backdoor key
Stepping outside, she is free
She(we gave her most of our lives)
Is leaving (sacrificed most of our lives)
Home (we gave her everything money could buy)
She's leaving home, after living alone, for so many years (bye bye)
Next up is Kanye West’s Heartless, referring to how heartlessly Demetrius treats Helena. Just switch the gender in the chorus lyrics and it applies perfectly to the situation.
“In the night I hear ‘em talk” - everyone knows about what Demetrius did to Helena; Lysander uses it as an example for why Hermia should be with him, and Theseus admits that he’s heard of Demetrius’s behavior and had wanted to talk to him about it.
In the night, I hear 'em talk
The coldest story ever told
Somewhere far along this road, [she] lost [her] soul to a [man] so heartless
How could you be so heartless?
Oh, how could you be so heartless?
David Bowie’s Magic Dance, from the movie Labyrinth, is a personal favorite of mine. I’ve loved that movie since I was just a child. And fortunately, it’s all about magic, dancing and kidnapping children, all things that are very present in Midsummer!
I saw my baby, trying hard as babe could try
What could I do?
My baby's fun had gone
And left my baby blue
Nobody knew
What kind of magic spell to use
Slime and snails
Or puppy dogs tails
Thunder or lightning
Then baby said
Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)
Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)
Put that baby's spell on me (ooh)
Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)
Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)
Put that magic jump on me (ooh)
Slap that baby, make him free
Billie Holiday’s You Go to My Head stands for Helena’s feelings for Demetrius. She loves him hopelessly and desperately; even though it seems like their relationship is truly over and he’s not interested any more, she pursues him.
The thrill of the thought
That you might give a thought to my plea
Casts a spell over me
Still I say to myself "Get a hold of yourself"
Can't you see that it never can be
You go to my head
With a smile that makes my temperature rise
Like a summer with a thousand Julys
You intoxicate my soul with your eyes
Though I'm certain that this heart of mine
Hasn't a ghost of a chance in this crazy romance
You go to my head
The Chordettes’ Mr Sandman refers simultaneously to a magical figure bringing sleep and love to the singer and the titular “dream.” After the night is over, all the humans involved in the shenanigans believe they have only dreamed of falling in love with various different people and having donkey’s heads and such.
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream
Make him the cutest that I've ever seen
Give him two lips like roses and clover
Then tell him that his lonesome nights are over
Mr. Sandman, I'm so alone
Don't have nobody to call my own
So, please turn on your magic beam
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream
I actually have been really struggling to find a song that represents the Rude Mechanicals and had some trouble. Yackety Sax maybe, but I already used that for my #ShakespearesPlaylist on The Comedy of Errors. What do y’all think? In any case, here’s an old video of The Beatles performing the Pyramus and Thisbe scene of Midsummer with a few other random dudes I don’t know on a variety show they hosted in 1964!
Finally, I’m closing out this post with a video of the recent production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, put on by my Shakespeare troupe The Britches and Hose! I’m not in it (I didn’t have a car at the time so I didn’t try out, no good way to get to rehearsals), but half my friends are! Also it’s the funniest version of this play I have EVER seen and you can probably hear me laughing hysterically throughout.
What suggestions do y’all have for A Midsummer Playlist? Please commen tor send them to me @RachaelDickzen on Twitter ! I’d love to hear your ideas. :)
